The Tracking Board reports that 20th Century Fox is taking a long look at Rob Liefeld’s creator-owned series Prophet.
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Originally a supporting character in Youngblood, John Prophet, a troubled super-soldier who gained his powers from a time-traveler. Prophet is, not unlike iZombie, populated by larger-than-life characters, some of whom (most notably Prophet and villain Philip Omen) have names with symbolic significance to their personalities or the plot.
There were a pair of Prophet series in the ’90s, generating millions of sales, but like many of Liefeld’s creator-owned characters, John Prophet largely disappeared for a few years around the turn of the century. In 2012, the series was revived with Brandon Graham and Simon Roy at the helm. That title was broadly acclaimed at its launch, but ended in the summer of 2014, setting up Prophet: Earth War. That’s expected to have more direct involvement by Liefeld and to hew somewhat more closely to the bombastic action of the early Prophet stories. It was originally planned for this year but TTB now places it in 2016.
With Deadpool looking like a sleeper hit and Liefeld being one of the best-selling comic artists of the last thirty years, it’s not surprising that some of his work will get another look from Hollywood. The artist himself generally admits he’s keen to have other-media adaptations happen (heck, Youngblood even had a short-lived animated series), although he himself sticks mainly to the comics.
If Prophet is picked up, it would be the second ’90s Image title to earn a big-screen adaptation (after Spawn). Liefeld is not committed to Fox at this point, and is reportedly shopping around a screenplay, although given Fox’s enthusiasm for Deadpool at present it seems like an obvious place for the project to land.
